Daytrip
by prepare4trouble
Summary: Following Naboo on his trip to Xooberon turns out not to have been such a good idea after all, when Howard and Vince find themselves imprisoned as enemies of the state. And then things get really bad...
1. Chapter 1

"Don't take this the wrong way, Naboo, but your planet is kind of rubbish." Vince was sitting with his back to the wall, arms tightly hugging his knees, back arched and shivering in his thin, fashionable jacket.

Naboo shrugged indifferently, "No one asked you to come. Might've been better if you hadn't, actually."

Vince scowled, but quickly smoothed the expression out. The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to have to worry about wrinkles. "All your transportation things are shiny jewellery," he said, "what do you expect? Why can't you be like a normal Shaman and drive a white van?"

"I don't think you've got that quite right, Vince."

Vince ignored him and looked around. They were in a room made of stone. The walls, floor and ceiling were all the same uniform grey colour, the only break from it being the slightly shiny grey of the thick metal door. The only light came from a row of small windows placed far out of reach along the very top of the wall that lay between them and the outside. The sun was rapidly setting, and soon it would be completely dark in their cell.

"What do you reckon they're doing to Howard?" Vince asked after a while, breaking the silence that had stretched taut across the room.

Naboo shrugged, "Dunno, they're probably torturing him or something,"

Vince's eyes opened wide as he peered across the gloom in an attempt to see whether or not Naboo was joking. He wasn't. Vince let out an involuntary moan of despair and hugged his knees even tighter, "This is all my fault, isn't it?"

"Yep," Naboo told him, "but don't worry, you'll get your turn,"

"What do you mean?" Vince's eyes widened further in panic.

"Well, you're the one that picked that stupid flower, don't you think they're going to be more angry at you than Howard?"

Vince thought about this for a moment, then visibly crumpled. He rested his head on his knees and closed his eyes. He missed Howard. If Howard were there, everything would be okay. Nothing bad could happen to them as long as they stayed together. Separated, he wasn't so sure.

* * *

Howard shivered sitting on the wooden bench. He hated this place. Not just the strange prison in which he currently found himself incarcerated, but the whole stupid planet. Every time he came here, and granted, it had only been twice, he managed to find himself in chains.

These particular chains were heavy iron things attached to cuffs on his wrists and ankles, and securing him to the wall. They allowed him a few feet of mobility, and placed him within easy sitting distance of the most uncomfortable bench he had ever encountered.

He reached his hands up to rub vigorously at the tops of his arms, friction supplying some temporary relief from the permanent chill of the cell, and scowled in irritation at the clanging of metal on metal as the chains banged against one another. He wondered what he had done to deserve this.

Well, it was obvious, wasn't it? He had met Vince. He couldn't _exactly_ say that everything had gone wrong when he met his best friend, especially since the opposite was true, but he could definitely say, with no doubt whatsoever, that if he had never met Vince, he wouldn't be chained to the wall in a jail cell on an alien planet. For starters, Vince had suggested they come here, and for seconds, Vince had been the one that had picked the stupid flower that had got them arrested.

Howard wondered why he had chosen that particular moment to try to be a hero. It was so utterly, ridiculously unlike him, that he wondered whether he had been overcome by some kind of temporary insanity. When the guard had grabbed hold of Vince and he dropped the stupid flower in shock, looking at Howard with such utter terror, Howard had become possessed by something that compelled him to spring forward and punch the guard in the face before attempting to pry his hands from Vince's arms.

It was a shame, really, that Howard had never been athletically inclined. He wondered whether, if he had been better at PE than music at school, he would have had the ability to knock out the guard, free Vince and let them both leg it away and teleport back to Earth before Naboo's ring had been confiscated from them. As it was, he had only made the guard more angry, and had completely forgotten that there were other guards around, all of whom were willing and able to leap in and squash the burst of heroism before it had chance to achieve anything.

For as long as he lived, Howard would never forget the look of panic on Vince's face as they were dragged apart, the younger man reaching out to try to grab hold of his arm even as he was pulled backwards and away from the garden in the opposite direction to Howard.

Whatever had been the reason for his uncharacteristic actions, and Howard was still banking on temporary insanity as a defence if it should come to it, Howard really wished that hadn't chosen that particular moment to be a hero. It meant he was now alone in jail cell, worrying about Vince, who was presumably in the same predicament, rather than being free, and therefore able to reason with their captors and try to find out what Vince had done that was so terrible.

Howard looked up as he heard the turning of a key in the lock. The door swung open to reveal the same guard that had grabbed Vince. Howard felt a small glow of satisfaction as he noticed the bruising appearing around his right eye. He hoped it hurt.

The guard was followed into the room by another man, who Howard recognised immediately as the short, blue skinned leader of the nomadic tribe that had adopted Vince as their 'Chosen one' last time they had found themselves on this hell hole of a planet. The same man that had ordered them to be killed, burying them up to their necks in the sand and leaving them to die in the hot sun. Howard immediately sprang to his feet, ignoring the jangling of his chains and pointed to the blue man, "You!"

"Yes, and you," he replied, before turning away from Howard and focusing his attention on the guard, "That's one of them," he said, "they must have escaped when we tried to kill them before. I thought it was odd if they had disintegrated in the sun. Can I have him back? He was irritating, but he made a useful slave."

The uniformed man shook his head, "We merely needed testimony as to his crimes," he said, "But when we are finished with him, you can have whatever is left."

"Hey, come on now," Howard protested, "I haven't done anything wrong, not really. I mean, I'm sorry about your eye, but it was temporary insanity. And the flower that Vince picked, how was he supposed to know he wasn't supposed to?"

"There was a sign right next to it," the guard told him, "That flower was a symbol of hope, one of the last of its kind. It was sacred to our people. What possible excuse could there be for such a transgression?"

Howard sighed. Well, that was just perfect, "Temporary insanity?" he tried.

"You mention the chos...the imposter. The one who pretended to be the chosen one?" the blue man asked.

"No," Howard told him, "no, he's not here, I meant a different Vince."

The man turned back to the guard, "The other one is here? In the building?" There was something in the widening of his eyes and the little puddle of drool that was beginning to form at the corner of his mouth that disgusted and terrified Howard with equal intensity.

The guard nodded as he turned to leave, and the nomadic leader spun around and followed him, practically jogging to keep up with his long strides, "Can I have that one too? I made a mistake trying to put him to death. He pretended to be the chosen one, he cost me my hand! Death is too good for him, and he's too pretty."

Howard struggled against his chains as the door opened and the guard held it for the nomad to leave. As he closed the door after him, the guard remaining in the cell, Howard just managed to catch the last thing he said, and it sent a chill of horror and revulsion through him, "He would make an excellent concubine,"

As Howard lunged forward, chains for the moment completely forgotten, putting all his energy into reaching the door and stopping the blue psychopath before he could get anywhere near Vince, two thoughts occurred to him. The first was that the insanity was back, and so wasn't as temporary as he had thought, and the second was 'ouch'. The second was prompted more by the fist that was pounded through his stomach than anything else. He sat back down. He sat there for a while, trying to work out what had happened.

He recovered his wits just as the guard was about to land another blow, and flinched out of the way, not avoiding the fist entirely, but lessening the impact of the punch, "What are you doing?" he gasped.

"So you don't like being hitting? Funny, you didn't seem to mind before."

"Okay, okay..." Howard held out a hand in front of him, palm forwards and waved t around none-threateningly, "I'm sorry. It's just, Vince..."

"How long have you been working with our enemies?"

"I..." Howard took as deep a breath as he could manage and his stomach protested violently, "What?"

"The people who wish to destroy our world, the anarchists. How long? How many other members of the organisation do you know?"

Howard shook his head in disbelief, squashing down the urge to back into a corner and curl up in a quivering ball, crying. "This is ridiculous. Look, you've got it all wrong. This isn't even our planet, we're just here on a daytrip with our friend Naboo. You might know him, he's from here."

"Never heard of him,"

The guard raised his fist to strike again and Howard cowered back, "Okay, well why would you? I haven't heard of everyone from Earth. I don't even know most of the people from my street. Look, my point is, why would he want to hurt his own planet, and why would we be helping when we don't know anything about the place?"

The guard smiled in a way that Howard really didn't like, and opened what looked like a black leather briefcase that Howard hadn't noticed until now. "We'll find out the truth soon enough," he said, and pulled out something that Howard couldn't identify. It looked looked like a thin metal wire, silver coloured and quite long. The guard picked up the briefcase and carried it closer, and Howard realised that it wasn't a briefcase at all, it was some kind of machine that the wire was attached.

This couldn't be good at all. Howard shrunk back against the wall, muttering "Don't kill me," over and over as he tried to make himself appear as small and unthreatening as possible. As the guard reached him and, with a sharp tug of his hair, jerked his head up to force eye contact, Howard couldn't help himself, he screamed.

* * *

In another part of the complex, Vince's head snapped up and he opened his eyes to complete blackness. "What was that?" he said, hoping Naboo was still there, "Was that Howard?"

"Yeah, I reckon," Naboo replied. As Vince slept, the shaman had moved across the room and was sitting next to him. Vince reached out in the darkness and grabbed hold of the his arm, then shuffled closer. An unspoken demonstration of his appreciation, as well as a way to keep track of the other man's position; he was fairly sure shamans could see in the dark, and could probably move away without being heard. "Don't worry," Naboo told him, "they probably haven't started the torture yet. People don't normally scream, usually they just kind of whimper,"

For almost two hours after the scream, they heard nothing. Vince sat bolt upright, his back leaning against the wall and his hand on Naboo's arm, the only two things whose location he knew in the impossible blackness of the room. He wasn't scared of the dark, he liked the dark, but he preferred it with enough light mixed in to see by. Like the kind of dark you get in a nightclub, or outside at night when there is a full moon. This kind of impenetrable darkness scared him a bit. There could be anything lurking in it. He wished Howard was there to tell him it was all right, but he wasn't. And somehow Naboo just wasn't the same.

When the door finally opened and light flooded in from the corridor beyond, Vince had become so used to the darkness, that the sudden unexpected burst made his eyes water.

A man entered. He wore the same uniform that the men who arrested them had worn, a kind of grey and red jacket and trousers, with some kind of weapon strapped around his waist. He stood in the doorway and looked at them for a few minutes before he spoke. As he did, Vince's eyes recovered from the sudden assault of light and he made out the silhouettes of several other people standing behind him.

"On your feet!" The man yelled eventually.

Vince and Naboo exchanged a glance, Naboo nodded and they both stood up.

The man entered the room flanked by two other soldiers who pointed their strange gun-like weapons at them, while the first soldier cuffed Vince's hands behind his back. He then motioned for them to walk towards he door.

"Hey, what about him? Vince asked, nodding at Naboo, "Why doesn't he get handcuffed?"

"He is free to go," the man answered.

Naboo's expression remained indifferent as he absorbed this news, and with it the implication that Vince was not free. "How come?" he asked eventually.

"After questioning your friend, we realise you are not anarchists. You did nothing wrong, except for making friends with a couple of idiots. This one, however," he indicated Vince with a flick of his thumb, "pulled the flower from the Gualhama plant, and the other one attacked a soldier."

Vince chewed on his bottom lip, "I didn't know that flower was important," he said, "I just thought it was pretty. Look, if you like flowers, I can get you some more. There's this shop near where I live..."

The man ignored him, "We would have let them go," he continued, "but it turns out they are wanted by the leader of a nomadic desert tribe, so we have decided to hand them over,"

"Hey, hang on a minute," said Vince, "you can't just go about handing us over to people like that! Who is this blok..."

The question dies on his lips as he noticed a familiar short blue figure standing just a few feet ahead of him, with a very unhappy looking Howard standing next to him, prevented from moving away by a hefty looking chain that connected his wrists to the hand of a muscular blue man with a very angry expression on his face.

Vince exchanged a glance with Howard, registered the defeat in his friend's eyes and smiled nervously. "Naboo?" he said quietly out of the corner of his mouth, "Help?"

Naboo shook his head, "I'll see what I can do," he said, "but in the meantime I reckon you'll have to go with them."


	2. Chapter 2

Probably to discourage them from trying to escape, they had been chained together by the hands and feet. Not actually attached to one another, they had a few feet of leeway, but it was still pretty inconvenient. Luckily, it was the middle of the night, and as soon as they had arrived back at the camp, the diminutive leader and his muscled cohort had retired to their tents, leaving Howard and Vince outside alone, next to the embers of the camp fire.

Howard glanced out into the desert, realising that he already had no idea which direction they had come from or how to get back to the city. If the restraints were to keep them in the camp, they were pointless. There was no danger of him heading off into the desert without a couple of camels, an ample supply of water and a decent map. Even then, he wouldn't be happy about it. There were very few things that would make him consider it, and if any of those situations were to arise, the fact that he was chained to Vince would hardly stop him.

If anything, it might actually encourage escape, since the younger man seemed to repel bad luck the way Howard repelled pretty girls. Chained to Vince, his chances of survival might actually rise above zero. Marginally.

Vince jerked his body quickly from side to side and he listened to the jangle of the dozens of seemingly unnecessary chains that were attached to the ridiculous clothes he had been forced into. They wore identical clothes, the same as Howard had worn last time they had been here. This time though, Vince was a little too preoccupied to enjoy the view nearly as much. He frowned and sat down on the sandy ground. It wasn't like he had to worry about getting his outfit dirty, at least. "Well, this is just awful," he announced to the general area.

As he sat, the chains attached to Howard's wrists pulled him downwards, and he decided between joining Vince on the floor - something he knew from experience would leave him with an uncomfortable amount of sand working its way inside his loincloth - and stooping over but remaining standing. Neither was a particularly present prospect. His back and legs ached, screaming out for relief, and he realised he had no choice but to sit. "Awful, is it?" he replied, "Funny, you didn't think it was so bad when I was the slave and you were the one lounging in the fancy tent pushing me around, did you?"

Vince shrugged, "Yeah, but that was funny. And we weren't in any danger. Now we're at the mercy of a demented dwarf who wants to turn me into his personal sex slave. It's a bit different, don't you think?"

Howard scoffed. "Well, it was alright for you, wasn't it? Laying on those cushions eating grapes while everyone sang about how great you were. They made me sleep outside!"

"Hmm," Vince nodded, "But I was completely in control of the situation, nothing would have happened to you."

Howard shook his head in disbelief, "You were in control of the situation?" he echoed, "The situation that ended with the two of us buried up to our necks in the sand waiting to die of sunstroke? That was the situation you were in control of, was it?"

"Yeah, well it would've been fine if you hadn't gone and..."

He broke off at the sound of a voice shouted across the encampment, "Hey, you slaves shut up, or I'll give you something more useful to do with your mouths!"

Vince immediately fell silent, and Howard looked at him for a moment, thinking, before voicing a question he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to, "Wait a minute, did he mean..."

Vince clasped a hand tightly across Howard's mouth and glared at him with a mixture of irritation and terror. The unspoken message was received loud and clear and Howard nodded his understanding. Vince released his grip slowly, and Howard ran a hand across his jaw, hoping it wouldn't bruise.

The conversation over for now, Howard lay himself down on the floor. There was a real chill in the air, and the sand felt cool to the touch. Despite the heat of the day, after the sun, set nights in the desert were cold. The only warmth came from the dying fire glowing in the middle of the camp. He shivered. The nomads should really rethink their slaves wardrobe if they didn't want to share living space with them.

He felt Vince lie down behind him, squash up close, and drape an arm over Howard's body so that the hand hovered close to his stomach. Howard didn't protest. For one thing, Vince could hardly move very far away even if he wanted to, and for another, the warmth was very welcome. Not only that, but his presence was comforting somehow. Instead, he relaxed as much as it is possible to do when you're being held captive on an alien planet and forced to sleep on the floor outside, and drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Days in the desert were long and hot and not ideally suited to the manual labour their captors forced on them. Howard swept the back of his hand across his brow and readjusted the sweat stained piece of cloth that he had tied around his head as meagre protection against the searing heat. He watched Vince, throwing himself into the work, hammering tent pegs into the ground with a piece of stone, quickly and expertly putting up tent after tent ready to settle for the night following their third move since they had arrived.

Howard marvelled at how quickly Vince had learned to do this, how expertly he could erect the tents and build the camp fire, the way he never complained when he was made to carry something heavy, how he never argued with their captors, never refused to do anything, he just got on with it. It worried Howard. He couldn't help but feel protective of Vince, he always had. This place was changing him. Vince wasn't supposed to change. Alright, it had been known to happen, but gradually so that Howard didn't really notice it until it was too late. Never anything like the dramatic personality shift that seemed to be happening here. Given a few more weeks, Howard worried that he would barely recognise his friend. Besides, petty as it seemed, it bothered him that the other man actually seemed to be coping better than Howard was.

He reached down to his belt, unhooked his flask of water and took a small swig of the warm liquid. His meagre daily allowance was already more than half gone, and it wasn't even midday.

A whip cracked behind him, so close that the displaced air brushed against the bare skin of his arms and he jumped in shock, narrowly avoiding dropping the flask and losing it's precious contents, "Get to work!" shouted the man holding the whip, and Howard hurried off without even turning to look at him.

Vince looked up as Howard approached and smiled, "Nearly done this one," he told him, indicating the tent with a nod of his head, "Only five more to go,"

"Yeah, great," Howard picked up another large rock and began half-heartedly pounding a tent peg into the ground, Vince watched him critically.

"You're doing it all wrong, you know."

Howard glanced at him questioningly, and Vince reached out and took the stone from Howard's hands, his fingers brushing lightly across Howard's palm as he did. He gripped the stone tightly, stood over the peg and pounded it into the ground, "Like this, see? Straight down, you're trying to do it half sideways, it'll never go deep enough, and the sand's too loose on the top to hold it."

Howard sighed, took back his stone and got to work on the next peg, Vince watched and nodded, "There, see?"

"Mmm," Howard nodded unenthusiastically and watched Vince quickly pound yet another peg into the ground. "What are you doing?" he asked eventually

"What do you mean?"

Howard began tying the string attaching to the tent around the pegs with the strongest knots he remembered from boyscouts, "All this working, actually making an effort, doing things right. It's not like you, Vince."

"Yeah," Vince's expression darkened as he glanced across the camp to the leader's tent. His was the first one they put up each time they moved, and as soon as it was done, the little blue man went inside and sheltered from the heat of the day, venturing out only occasionally to request drinks and entertainment. "Well, the better I am at this, the less likely they are to make me work in there instead."

Howard thought about this and nodded.

Vince put down his makeshift hammer, sat down on the sand and took a small sip of his water rations. He placed his hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun, and squinted up at Howard, "When do you think Naboo will rescue us?" he asked.

"I..." Howard increased the speed of his hammering and glanced away. Behind him, he could feel the heat of Vince's gaze boring into the back of his skull, hotter even than the sun. When he couldn't take it any more, he stopped and turned around. "I don't know, Vince," he muttered.

"But it must be soon, right? I mean, he's been ages. How long've we been here, a year?"

Howard sighed, "More like two weeks, but I see your point," he dropped his stone on the ground next to the half hammered tent peg and lowered himself onto the ground next to Vince. He rubbed at his eyes gently with his fingertips and tried to think of the best way to vocalise the thought that had been bothering him since they arrived and that he hadn't dared to mention out loud. "Vince," he said gently, "I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility Naboo isn't coming for us,"

"What? Of course he is!"

Howard shook his head, "He's not exactly the most reliable of people, is he? He probably got home, lit up a joint and forgot all about us. If we're lucky, he might realise a couple of months down the line that we've not been showing up for work, then he might remember where we are. But even then, I wouldn't hold out much hope for rescue,"

"But..." Vince's eyes grew wide and his hands began fidgeting with his flask, nervously spinning it around, tapping his fingertips on the edge as his eyes flickered from left to right, looking over the camp, away to the desert beyond it, to the sky to their left, everywhere but at Howard.

Howard tried desperately to think of a way to take back what he had said. That worry was his own burden, brought on by his paranoia and natural pessimism, it wasn't something Vince should have to deal with. But once the thought was out there in the world, it was impossible to take back. Vince's normally upbeat and undentable sunshine personality had taken a battering recently. Normally he might have laughed as the idea bounced right off of him, but now it stuck.

"But we can't stay here forever!" he said, "Howard, the sun'll ruin my skin, and all this hard work isn't good for me. Look at my hands!" he held them up for Howard to examine. They looked like hands. Slightly dirty, but water wasn't exactly in abundance, and a few broken nails, but that was to be expected. Then, presumably that was Vince's point, and from Vince's point of view, it wasn't a bad one. "What are we going to do?!" he asked, then opened his flask and took a larger gulp of water.

For a moment, just a tiny, insignificant, so small that it didn't really count moment, Howard felt a momentary glimmer of satisfaction as Vince finally realised the seriousness of the situation. He squashed it down with a reminder that he was trapped there too. "I don't know," he admitted, "but I'll think of something. Don't you worry, Vince. I'll get us out of here." He just wished he had any clue how he was going to manage that.

Vince nodded, unconvinced and picked up his hammer-stone again. He looked at it carefully, turning it around in his hands, and then set it down in his lap. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"What for?"

Vince shrugged, "This. Everything. I wish I hadn't picked that stupid flower. I didn't even want it anyway, I just thought..." he sighed, "I'm sorry," he said again.

Howard shook his head,"It wasn't your fault, you didn't know," he climbed back to his feet and got to work again, "But if you get any bright ideas about how to get out of here, let me know. I'm sure I'll come up with one sooner or later anyway"

Vince smiled, "I've got one,"

"Oh?" Howard raised an eyebrow in surprise and looked at Vince expectantly.

Vince's voice dropped to barely audible and Howard stepped closer to hear the plan, "It's easy, we'll just have to escape," he told him.

"Yes, well obviously," Howard found himself staring at Vince in disbelief, "I meant I'd think of a way of escaping. It's not going to be a case of just walking out of the camp, is it? It's going to take careful planning."

Vince didn't reply, his face took on a thoughtful expression, and as he worked, his gaze drifted across the camp and away over the horizon.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N - Sorry it's been such a long time between updates, I just lost track of where this was going, but I'm on course again, got an idea and everything now. Go me, eh? So hopefully it won't be as long next time._

. It seemed like such a simple concept. Just creep away in the middle of the night as their captors slept. Leave the camp behind them, let the wind cover their footprints in the loose sand and just put as much distance between them and the blue nomads as possible. But it wasn't that simple, was it?

Yes, to someone like Vince escaping might seem just that easy, but Howard was cursed with the power of forethought, of imagination. And glancing out into the seemingly endless alien desert, he could imagine so many things that could go wrong that it really didn't bare thinking about.

He could see them staggering through the barren land desperate for water, running towards a non-existent oasis until they eventually collapsed and died. He imagined them walking for days, only to find they had gone in a circle when the arrived back at the camp, too thirsty and exhausted to leave again, to face the wrath of the psychopathic leader. He imagined all the terrible creatures that might live out there, imagined them hungry for meat. He imagined their deaths a hundred different ways, and worst of all, he imagined Vince's death, Howard standing there, helpless to do anything. And finally, he imagined himself alone, where it wouldn't matter whether he was re-captured or not because without Vince, what would be the point of anything?

He wondered whether Vince felt the same way.

To his side, the idea of escape seemed to have enlivened Vince somehow. There was a spring in his step that Howard hadn't seen since before they came here. He smiled excitedly as he pounded another peg into the ground.

Vince glanced up to see Howard watching him and smiled excitedly, "When are we going to do it?" he asked, "Howard, this is going to be amazing! I can't wait to get home!"

So that was it then, they were going to do it. But that was another thing. Having escaped the camp, assuming the desert didn't finish them off, how were they supposed to get back to Earth?

***

They spent their nights outside whenever the weather allowed. The sand blown by the wind drove them inside most of the time, but tonight it was calm. Outside was better. After their captors had fallen asleep, it gave them the opportunity to talk without being overheard. They spoke in low voices, sitting as far from the tents as they dared go. They weren't restrained, what would be the point? There was nowhere for them to go.

"Howard, how's my hair look? Be honest." Vince was combing his fingers through his dark locks, working out the knots that had formed there throughout the day.

Howard shrugged, "It's fine,"

"Liar," Vince flicked his hair behind his back and tied it in place with a piece of string, "I'd kill for a mirror," he muttered, then glanced at Howard, taking in his more dishevelled than usual appearance and shook his head, "On second thoughts, I don't really want to know."

Howard smiled. Actually, Vince didn't look that bad. Especially considering where he had been living for the past couple of weeks. But that was typical, Vince had never looked bad a day in his life. It was still surprising every time Howard looked at him and saw the hair he was so proud of tied away behind his back and the beginnings of roots starting to show. And without the make up, without the clothes, he seemed... different, certainly. But not in a bad way. Vince, of course, would probably be horrified.

"So when are we getting out of here?" Vince asked as he made himself as comfortable as possible on the ground.

Howard looked away unto the desert, barely lit by the weak light of Xooberon's half moon, "I don't know," he said.

"It had better be soon,"

"Look," Howard turned to face him, "I know this place is grim, but I really don't think it's a good idea to go running off into the desert with no idea where we're going. There could be anything out there. If the things we ran into last time we were here are any indication..." Vince was looking at him with a mixture of disbelief and disappointment, "We could spend days walking in the wrong direction. We might die, Vince."

Vince shook his head, "'Course we won't," he said, "you know how it goes. Something'll come up, it always does. Someone will help us out, or we'll find a magic portal back to the flat, something like that. We never die."

Howard blinked to disguise the involuntary eye roll that Vince's words provoked, "Vince, the fact that we haven't died yet isn't exactly a good reason to keep doing potentially suicidal things, is it? Yes, we've been lucky so far, but think of the kind of luck we've had recently. Getting arrested, getting stuck here, do you really want to bet your life on things just suddenly starting to go right again?"

"Might be worth it,"

"How? How could it possibly be worth it?"

Vince pulled a thin lock of hair from his unfamiliar ponytail and began twirling it nervously around his fingers as his gaze drifted across the encampment to the leader's tent, "That blue midget's been eyeing me up all day today, it's getting worse. There is no way I'm letting him do what he's thinking of doing. I'd rather take my chances in the desert."

"You've got nothing to worry about there," Howard glanced distastefully at the tent and edged himself closer to Vince, "He won't get within ten feet of you, I won't let him. Remember what I did to that guard?"

"Yeah," Vince slipped his arm around Howard's waist an kissed him quickly on the cheek, "you got in a lucky punch, and then all his mates stepped in and locked us up. This guy's got mates too, you know,"he shook his head, "Cheers, Howard, but I'm off. Tomorrow night, yeah? You don't have to come, but I wish you would."

Howard nodded, "Of course I will, little man. Tomorrow night, you and me heading off into the sunset. I wouldn't miss it."

"We'll have to wait 'til way after sunset," Vince told him, "it needs to be after everyone's asleep."

"Yeah, good point. But it's a nice image."

Vince smiled happily and laid down, snuggling against Howard, who sat there for a long time, watching him sleep and trying to quell the nervous churning in his stomach.

***

Days were long in the desert, and nights relatively short. As Vince dozed on their blanket, the one concession to comfort that they had been allowed, Howard weighed the benefits of sleep against the chance to use the night to their advantage and gather supplies for what would no doubt be a difficult journey.

He considered waking Vince and getting him to help, but he didn't have the heart to; the other man would need all his strength for the next night, and Howard really didn't think he could cope with his whining if Vince was too tired as they set off.

Howard carefully extracted himself from Vince's arms and got to his feet. As he walked back towards the camp, he began to form a mental list of potentially useful items and where he would find them. Then he began his raid, liberating from the nomads flasks of water, pieces of the salty dried meat that passed for food most of the time, and, because it was just sitting there practically begging to be taken, a short, slightly blunt knife. It wasn't a lot, but collecting it took most of the night, and to Howard's dismay there were no maps. It wasn't a big surprise to him, with the way the desert landscape was constantly shifting and the fact that he hadn't seen one, but he had been holding on to a vague hope that the desert people didn't really know their way around any better than he did, and navigated the sand using maps, or even some kind of GPS, that they kept hidden to keep up the pretence. Apparently not.

Vince got his first good night's sleep in weeks that night. He woke as the sun was just rising, to find himself alone on their blanket, Howard was gone. He fought down a sudden burst of panic that Howard had left without him, or that their plans had been overheard and Howard had been taken away, and took a deep breath. There had to be another explanation, Howard wouldn't just leave, and if anyone tried to grab him in his sleep, he'd make a lot of noise. Vince knew that from experience.

To his left, the camp was still asleep, the camp fire had died down to smouldering embers, glowing faintly in the grey pre-dawn light. Vince stretched and stood up, shook the sand from the blanket and began to fold it up.

"Psssst!"

Vince spun around in shock at the strange, unexpected noise, scanning the ground for snakes, or anything else that could be responsible. There was nothing, so he began to back away nervously towards the camp. He didn't get on the well with Earth's snakes, here they might be even worse. And possibly invisible. He didn't fancy that much at all.

"Pssst! Vince!"

Howard? Vince turned around and scanned the area, but there was no one there. He shook his head and wondered whether he might be still asleep and having some weird dream, when Howard was suddenly standing in front of him. "Where'd you come from?" Vince asked.

"Over there," Howard pointed forwards and slightly down, and Vince noticed that they were near the edge of a kind of cliff made of sand. Their sleeping place was just a few feet from the edge of a ridge around six foot deep, and very difficult to see because of the endless appearance of the desert. Everything just seemed to blend into one big yellow nothingness.

"What were you doing down there?" Vince peered over the edge. Some of the sand down there had been disturbed.

Howard climbed back down the ridge and began smoothing out the sand with the palms of his hands, "I've got us some supplies," he explained, "Flasks of water, a bit of food. If we're going to do this, we're going to do it right, not just go walking off into the desert unprepared."

Vince grinned, "How long did that take you?"

"Most of the night," Howard walked to where the ridge was smallest and climbed back up, "I didn't take too much, I didn't want anyone suspicious, but if we can find shelter, we might be all right for a few days. Assuming nothing eats us or anything..." He glanced nervously out into the desert. "Then again, at least that way it'd be quick..."

Vince squeezed his free arm around Howard's back and grinned, "Will you stop worrying? Nothing's going to eat us!" He really wished Howard would stop with the doom and gloom. Things were bad enough already, but Howard seemed to be acting like they were heading out to die, like some kind of noble suicide attempt. Well Vince wasn't into that. Self harm was Howard's thing, Vince just wanted to go home.

***

Naboo looked with some trepidation around the King's great hall. It was overly grand, a huge, cavernous room, the man feature of which was a huge dining table. Drapes covered the walls and the light was supplied by torched hanging on the wall. It was a bit medieval for Naboo's tastes. The table was filled with food, and while Naboo picked at his couscous, the King tucked enthusiastically into the banquet, making appreciative noises as he did.

"So, about Vince and Howard?" asked Naboo eventually.

"What?" said the King through a mouthful of pita bread and hummous, "Oh, yes. Well it seems to me that they deserve everything they get. But seeing as it's you, Naboo, and I do owe you a favour, I'll tell the tribe to let them go next time they're in town."

"Right, and when do you reckon that's going to be?" asked Naboo.

The king shrugged, "No more than a couple of years," he said.

"Your majesty, people from Earth don't live as long as we do, a couple of years it quite a long time for them. And its a while for me not to have any rent coming in, too."

"Very well," the King considered, "go and find them if you can, tell the tribal leader you're acting on my authority,"

"And he'll do as I say?"

The king shrugged, "It's worth a try,"

Naboo nodded in agreement. To be honest, he wasn't sure it was worth trying. He had already come up with the idea of finding the tribe and asking them to set them free, and dismissed it as too dangerous. Saying that someone who wasn't even there said it was okay wasn't going to be a big help. On the other hand if they weren't willing to listen, Bollo could be pretty intimidating when he wanted. If he could find the tribe, he could probably get Vince home. Howard too, if he was lucky. Then he could get on with getting stoned and watching TV. The only problem would be finding them.

He got to his feet, "Well, thanks your majesty, you've been a big help," he lied.

"Any time, Naboo," The king didn't even look up, too fixated on his falafel bother.

Naboo rolled his eyes and left, picking up his magic carpet at the door. He collected Bollo and they set out into to the desert.


End file.
